Day of Suicide Attacks Displays Strength of Pakistani Taliban

A victim of a bomb blast in Chakwal, south of Islamabad.Credit
Faisal Mahmood/Reuters

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a crowded Shiite mosque just south of the capital on Sunday, killing at least 26 people. It was the third suicide attack in Pakistan in 24 hours, in a sign that the Pakistani Taliban are overwhelming the nation’s security forces.

The assault south of the capital, Islamabad, appeared to be carefully planned. It took place in Chakwal, a town that has historically had strong ties to the Pakistani Army, and in a Shiite mosque. The Pakistani Taliban have increasingly attacked Shiite mosques.

The latest bombing occurred about 12 hours after a suicide bomber struck in an upper-class neighborhood of Islamabad on Saturday night, killing eight paramilitary security officers assigned to guard foreign diplomats and wealthy residents. On Saturday morning, a suicide bomber drove his vehicle into a group of civilians on the side of the road in Miram Shah, in North Waziristan, killing at least eight people, including schoolchildren.

In a telephone interview on Sunday, Hakimullah Mehsud, a powerful deputy to Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, said the Taliban were responsible for the suicide attacks in Islamabad and Chakwal.

He said the Islamabad bombing had been in retaliation for an attack against him by a remotely piloted American aircraft on Wednesday in Orakzai, southwest of Peshawar in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. The attack killed at least 10 people, American intelligence officials said.

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An injured victim of a suicide bombing in Chakwal was brought to a hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on Sunday.Credit
Associated Press

Speaking hurriedly from Orakzai, Hakimullah Mehsud said the Pakistani Taliban planned to carry out two bombings a week within Pakistan in what he called “revenge” against Pakistan for the American missile strikes.

He did not specify whether the attacks would be by suicide bombers or in commando-style assaults, a technique used against a police training school in Lahore last week, in which 8 police officers were killed and more than 100 were wounded. Baitullah Mehsud took responsibility for that attack and said it was in response to American missile strikes.

American military officials have said the missile strikes have killed nearly a dozen top operatives from Al Qaeda based in havens in the tribal areas.

The strikes, which have intensified since President Asif Ali Zardari took office in September, are among the most effective instruments in the United States arsenal against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, American officials have said.

Senior Pakistani officials have routinely protested that the drone attacks represent an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty, although the government has quietly assented to the strikes.

Hakimullah Mehsud said the attack in Chakwal on Sunday morning was carried out by a group known as the Fidayeen-e-Islam, part of the broad alliance known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban. The Fidayeen-e-Islam is believed to be led by Qari Hussain, the chief technician and motivator of Taliban suicide bombers, and is based in South Waziristan, according to Taliban experts.

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Islamabad, Miram Shah and Chakwal were singled out.Credit
The New York Times

Mr. Mehsud said he would release a video showing that the recent attacks were being conducted by “Pakistanis and Muslims,” and not by foreigners, as the Pakistani government has asserted.

In Sunday’s attack, a witness at the Shiite mosque told Pakistani television that the suicide bomber had been stopped at the door, but that he had pushed himself forward and then detonated the explosives strapped to his body.

Separately, John Solecki, an American working for the United Nations who was abducted more than two months ago, was found alive on the side of a road near Quetta just before midnight Saturday, a United Nations spokeswoman, Jennifer Pagonis, said.

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The abductors called the United Nations headquarters in Islamabad shortly after 8 p.m. on Saturday, and said, “ ‘John has been released, go and pick up your man,’ ” Ms. Pagonis said.

It was the call the United Nations had been waiting for since his disappearance, and the only direct communication with his kidnappers, a group that called itself the Baluchistan Liberation United Front, she said. After reports from the abductors that Mr. Solecki was very sick, the United Nations team that picked him up was “enormously relieved to see he was not critically ill,” she said.

She declined to say where Mr. Solecki was on Sunday. The Associated Press reported he had left Pakistan for the United States.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Day of Suicide Attacks Displays Strength of Pakistani Taliban. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe